


Speak Silence No More

by rea_of_sunshine



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (In The World Where We Ignore The Finale), Canon-typical alcohol abuse, Dean Winchester's Emotional Trauma, Drunken Confessions, First Kiss, Huddling For Warmth, Idiots in Love, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Soft Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28425789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rea_of_sunshine/pseuds/rea_of_sunshine
Summary: When Dean imagined this moment, it went like this:Dean bursts into the Empty—guns blazing, chin high, righteous anger coursing through him. No matter what form his plans and fantasies and whiskey-drunk-whispered-promises took, he is always,alwayssuccessful. When he imagined it, he was finally the hero Cas deserved.The reality of the moment is this:It’s fucking cold.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 45
Kudos: 318





	Speak Silence No More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mere_Mortifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/gifts).



> A VERY LATE HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR [MERE](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/pseuds/Mere_Mortifer), MY BUDDY, MY PAL, MY FRIEND-O-MY-SOUL!!!!!!!!! I'm so sorry this is ridiculously late, but I hope you enjoy, and I want you to know that I healed my soul a bit by writing this, so thank you for requesting huddling for warmth and a drunken love confession. 
> 
> God, please be warned, this is v, v soft... 
> 
> Post 15x19, and we don't acknowledge 15x20 in this house, sorry.

When Dean imagined this moment, it went like this: 

Dean bursts into the Empty—guns blazing, chin high, righteous anger coursing through him. 

Sometimes, he imagined the battle scene from _Braveheart_ , spittle and swords snarling through the darkness. Sometimes, he was mowing down a whole army—he’d been up against worse odds. Sometimes, it was just the one formidable foe, reeking of bubbled tar and mountain air. (Dean smelled the mountain tar for weeks—after. Even when things calmed down, Jack in Heaven, Rowena keeping Hell drum-tight, not a single monster-rustle since Chuck shazamed away the whole world…Dean would wake up in a panic, thinking his walls were bubbling open again, letting the sucking rot back into the world, and there was tar and mountain air.) 

But no matter what form his plans and fantasies and whiskey-drunk-whispered-promises took, he was always, _always_ successful. When he imagined it, he was finally the hero Cas deserved. 

The reality of the moment is this: 

It’s fucking cold. 

He’d stared blankly as Sam begged him not to open the door to the Empty, to let Cas fucking _rot_. Then, he’d socked his little brother across the jaw hard enough to send him sprawling. He’d snarled something he’ll probably apologize for later— _after_ he’s dragged Cas out of the Empty, like hell he’s going to let Cas rot—and left him there, bleeding and stunned on the bunker floor. Then, he gunned Baby across four states to that barn in Illinois, where his and Bobby’s protection sigils stood pepper-flecked in the twelve years since. 

He didn’t entirely know why he chose the barn in Illinois. Part of him thought it would be fitting, full-circle-symmetrical or whatever, since Cas dragged him out of Hell, and now, he’s dragging Cas out of the Empty. The first place they saw each other top-side back then, the first place they’ll see each other top-side now. Part of him just thought it was the only place that made sense, the only _way_ that made sense, even if there was no logic to back it up. 

He’d survived this long on instinct and pure chutzpa, might as well try his luck on something that actually mattered. If this was the “stupid, completely reckless”—as Sam had so tactfully called his plan to go fishing in the Empty—decision that ended him, fine. So be it. 

At least…that had been his attitude somewhere close to eighteen hours ago, when he slit open his hand to finish the ritual that opened the door, when he tightened the straps of his backpack, loaded down with salt and iron and weapons galore, and stepped through. 

He’d started out into the deep, gnawing emptiness as a perfect simulacrum of his fantasies. He’d stomped and shouted and swung into the blackness enshrouding him. He’d held his chin high, blazed his guns, _felt_ that righteous anger as though he was truly embodying the Righteous Man for the first time in his life. 

But when he’d imagined this moment, there was always something to fight, and without it, without that sense of progress in flesh pounding flesh pounding flesh, without any indication that what he was doing was making a damn one way or another, he burned out quickly. 

Now, he’s just fucking cold. Chilled to the goddamn bone. 

There’s nothing. No one. He’s shouted himself hoarse looking for Cas, treaded on and on into the nothingness, shivering as his joints stiffened with cold. 

His breath comes in short, panicked bursts, and the sound barely makes it to his ears before being swallowed up by the Empty. 

He wonders if he’ll die here. 

And with that thought, the swelling panic he’d been trying so hard to keep locked away bubbles up, snags in his throat.

It’s not even the thought of this being his end that make his breath catch. It’s the thought that, if this _is_ his end, then he’s going to die never having made it clear to Cas, in no uncertain terms, how much of a goddamn idiot he was for kicking the lights out like that. _Dean_ was supposed to be the one to die a martyr, to go out in a self-sacrificing blaze. Not Cas. Never Cas. 

It’s the thought that, if this _is_ his end, then Cas never comes back, and Dean never gets the chance to tell him, tell him he _loves him, dammit!_ Of course, he does! Cas is everything Dean’s ever wanted! Apple pie life with his best friend, the only person who has ever _seen_ Dean and chose him anyway. Of course, he loves Cas… 

And if this is the end of him, then he’ll never get to make up for all the wrongs he’s done him, to trade all the punches thrown for coffees in bed, to trade the lies they’ve seared into each other for cheap beer and soft sex, to trade the anger and the sharpness and the hurt for something better. 

He’s got a laundry list a mile long filled with the ways he’s hurt Cas, and never once did it stop pressing into his gut like a steel knife, even when he was actively making the list longer. He’d just…he’d always thought there would be more time to make it right, once things were settled. 

And things are settled. And Dean’ll be goddamned if he isn’t going to start making things right. 

But he has to find Cas first. 

The cold barrels through him again, like a wind without movement, a sudden strike of ice down his spine, and Dean gasps. 

His fingers are numb, and he’s at war with his body, the damn useless thing jerking like a marionette as he tries to shuffle forward. 

When he falls, his knees crack hard against the nothingness below him, and there are a dozen memories nestled familiar in the pain of it. 

They flash behind his clenched eyes, sharp as lightning. Knees thudding down beside the body Lucifer ran through, not Cas anymore, just the corpse of another person he’d gotten killed. Knees slamming into the floor of the crypt, staring up at Cas and tasting blood everywhere, begging him to hear him, to _see him_. Not Cas. Not in that moment. In an alleyway, his intention to say yes to Michael rattling like a bomb behind his ribs, skull ringing where Castiel slammed him against the wall. Not Cas. Castiel, angel of the lord, vengeful after finally realizing that Dean _wasn’t fucking worth it_. 

All those moments that Dean wouldn’t get to write over if he couldn’t find him. 

“Cas,” Dean gasps, into the darkness. It sounds very loud, louder even than when he’d been scraping his vocal cords raw, louder than the gunshots and the temper tantrums and the cavernous sounds of his footsteps. 

The mountain air is everywhere, and he’s so fucking cold. It’s so hard to think. 

“Cas,” he tries again, whispering, and he flinches at the reverberation of his own voice. His heart is trilling in his chest, and his lips are barreling, choking out uncooperative, chopped up sentences in the cold. “Cas, gotta wake up, man, gotta help me find you. I need you…I can’t…I need you to help me. Please. _Please_.” 

He feels like he’s in Purgatory all over again, the raw crush of emotions pressing against him from all sides, as oppressive as the Emptiness sliding down his throat. When he opens his eyes, there’s nothing for miles and miles. Not a single speck of light. 

He thinks he’s going to die here. His arms give when he tries to push himself up. His lungs feel like they’re sheathed in ice, like they’ll shatter on every exhale, but his breath is heaving in and out of him just the same. 

He thinks he’s going to die here. 

He’s…he’s going to die here. 

“Cas,” he breathes. He thinks, if it’s going to be his last word, well, at least he picked a good one. 

Then. And then. 

“Dean?” 

It goes through him like a shot, and though he’s crumpled on the un-ground nearly frozen solid, it’s enough to make him turn his head, and then, _and then_ , there’s Cas. He stares at Dean for a breath, confusion and concern and fear warring on his face, before he’s running over and dropping down beside Dean. 

Cas’ hand comes up to cradle Dean’s cheek, and it’s a shock-reverse mirror of every other time they’ve been on death’s doorstep, unfamiliar and terrifying and _warm_ enough that Dean has the single, chugging thought that he much prefers this end of the exchange before the cold drags him under. 

He comes back around at some point later—it’s impossible to know when with all the emptiness—to Cas hauling him over the not-ground, towards the glowing door of _home_ in the otherwise void.

“I’m gonna get you home, Dean,” Cas mutters, though it seems like he’s mostly talking to himself, since Dean’s too fucking cold to have made any indication that he was back in the realm of semi-consciousness. 

Dean closes his eyes long enough to think about how nice it’s going to be to have Cas back at home, then wrenches them back open. Cas can’t come home with him. Not like this. Not yet.

It takes everything in Dean to jerk away from Cas, every ounce of strength in his frigid, brittle body, but it comes as enough of a surprise to Cas—who apparently _had_ thought Dean was still unconscious—that he finds himself tumbling out of Cas’ arms and onto the not-ground. 

He doesn’t manage to get his arms under him fully; instead, his shoulder slams into the ground, and he groans.

The flickering light, pouring in from their doorway home, now close enough to graze his fingers over, gives Dean a crystal-clear view of the spike of fear across Cas’ face. 

“Wha—Dean?” Cas asks, crouching down beside him again. “Are you okay?” 

Dean knows he’s got to say something, to put words in the right order so that Cas can understand, can _choose_. He needs Cas to choose this. 

But all he can string together in his sluggish, iced-over brain is, “Can’t come with me.” 

He’s struggling so hard to get the words out that they come out near a bark. Cas flinches, and if Dean had more control over his body than rhythmic convulsions from the cold, he’d be flinching too. 

The hurt warps onto Cas’ face immediately. So like all the times Dean has failed him before. The hand that holds Dean’s shoulder, holds Dean up, flexes, and Dean’s screaming, but it doesn’t make it past his lips. 

“No,” Cas says, shaking his head. “No, of course not.” 

Dean fights the lock of his muscles to put his hand up, clenches it in Cas’ coat. 

“No…” Dean stammers finally. “Not human.” 

His plan, while heroic and romantic and meaningful, well, it hadn’t been perfect. Use the spell Nick left to open the door to the Empty. Find Cas. Tell him he loves him, tell him he wants him home, tell him there’s nothing, _nothing_ he can’t have from Dean. Tell him the cost. Let him choose. 

No, it hadn’t been a perfect plan. A perfect plan wouldn’t make Cas choose between being an angel and being with Dean. 

And Dean hated himself for it, but it was the only way he knew. 

Cas’ brow furrows as he looks at him, the hurt finally, slowly draining to make way for confusion. 

He wanted to do this right, be elegant and grateful and everything that Cas deserves. But this is all he’s got. Frostbite numbing his fingers and teeth that won’t stop chattering and a cold so deep that it makes it hard to think. 

Dean’s movements are jerky when he goes for the angel blade, uncoordinated, but Cas doesn’t flinch. Not even when Dean rests the tip as close to his throat as close as he dares. 

He wanted to do this right, but all he can do is stammer out, “Be human, Cas,” and gaze up at Cas. Hope that it’s enough. 

For an endless moment, Cas just stares. Slowly, the hurt fades, the confusion fades, and all he’s left seeing pour out of Cas is a grim resignation. His lip trembles as he takes the blade from Dean’s hand. 

“Alright, Dean,” Cas murmurs, and then, the Empty is set ablaze by the last vestiges of Cas’ Grace pouring out into the darkness around them. 

Dean closes his eyes against it, and when Cas sags against him, he does his best to wrap him in his arms. 

There’s barely time to suck in a breath of that tarred mountain air before the non-walls of the Empty start bubbling around them. Panicked, Dean scrabbles his useless fingers over the back of Cas’ coat. 

“Cas,” he manages, just before a figure springs to life from the darkness. 

“You _cheated_!” Meg hisses, and it takes Dean a moment to realize this isn’t Meg but the Empty itself. 

Dean feels Cas weakly lift his head, but Dean, even when his extremities refuse to cooperate, refuses even harder to let Cas go. 

“He’s…not yours,” Dean spits. His teeth clack together, and the Empty seethes before them. 

“Oh, he’s still _mine_ , Winchester,” the Empty growls. 

She raises her hand, and Sam told Dean enough about his—completely stupid but beside-the-point—encounter with the Empty to know that this is a cosmic entity that likes to wrangle Winchester organs into pretty little bows. It’s just enough of an adrenaline hit that, even though he knows he won’t be able to stand, let alone pull Cas up and through the door, he’s suddenly not out of options. 

Frozen limbs be damned, Dean fucking _rolls_ them the last few feet through the doorway, clutching Cas with everything in him until the light of the barn explodes around them and the wall he’d used to open the Empty gurgles closed again. 

His heart goes freewheeling in his chest, but even being back on Earth isn’t enough to halt the shock. He lies there on that dirty barn floor, Cas’ deadweight crushed on top of him, and tries to hang on to consciousness. 

He doesn’t last long. 

He wakes up in a similar position to last time, Cas dragging him across the ground, now with significantly more effort and a mess of blood down the front of him.

“Fucking Dean,” Cas huffs with every step. Again, he doesn’t seem to be talking _to_ Dean. “I swear, if you went through all that just to die now…”

It’s an empty threat. Dean knows. Cas is holding him too tightly for it to be anything else, but still. 

“Not dying,” Dean grunts, trying—and failing—to get his legs under him. Cas startles, and they buckle to the ground at the mouth of the barn. “Just cold,” he finishes lamely, his knees protesting the sudden impact. 

Cas bows his head, trembling where he holds Dean. Both of them are trembling, actually, but Dean’s got the sinking feeling that they’re trembling for two different reasons. When Cas lifts his face back towards Dean, he sees he’s right. Cas has tears racing down his cheeks. 

“You scared the fuck out of me,” he spits, and if Dean hadn’t watched the last of Cas’ Grace evaporate into the Empty not ten—conscious—minutes ago, he’d think he was in danger of being smote. The righteous anger sends Dean’s stomach tumbling. 

“’M sorry,” he says, and though he is, his teeth clack together so much that it’s hard to sound sincere. 

Cas swipes an angry arm across his face then scoffs. 

“I forgot how volatile it is being human,” he says, staring down at the wet marks on his coat sleeve. That sick, churning feeling stumbles through Dean again. 

“’M sorry,” he says again, softer this time. 

Cas doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and then he nods, not looking at Dean, and pulls them both upright. 

“Let’s get you to the car. Get warm.” 

Dean manages to be little more than deadweight as Cas drags them both to the car, and he can’t even protest when Cas opens the backseat door and drops him inside. 

Cas finds Baby’s keys exactly where they always are—Dean’s front pocket, Cas’ hand is _scalding_ —and closes the door behind Dean gently before making his way to the driver’s side. 

The engine clicks. 

Cas lets out a slow, measured breath, then turns the key again. 

Nothing. 

The windows around them begin to fog with their breath, and Dean suddenly understands why even being back on Earth hasn’t been enough to snap the chill away. It’s friggin’ January in Illinois, and Baby’s been left to the elements for damn-near twenty-four hours. 

“’S too cold,” Dean slurs from the back. 

“You’re too cold,” Cas mutters, and Dean isn’t sure in his fogged brain if that’s supposed to be a shitty comeback or if he’s merely stating a fact. He decides, despite knowing Cas’ propensity for sarcasm at the worst of times, that it’s the latter. 

“’M alright,” Dean says, but it falls flat when the iced vinyl of the backseat whips out across a suddenly-exposed strip of flesh. He shudders. 

Cas glares at him in the rearview, just before he gets that stubborn little glint in his eye. Dean swallows on pure instinct, then grimaces as the dry rub of his throat makes itself known. 

Cas is pushing open the door and manhandling Dean across the bench before he can get a word in. Dean’s heart lurches at having Cas so close, but he just draws out the spare blanket they keep under the front seat. 

“Here,” Cas says, shaking it out and wrapping it around Dean’s shoulders. 

They sit there saying nothing for a long, long moment, both staring out of the frosted windshield. The silence is only broken up by Dean’s unslowing shudders. 

“Glad you’re…home,” Dean manages after a bit, glancing over at Cas. The shallow cut on his neck has clotted, but he looks garish and sunken. 

When his eyes meet Dean’s, it’s difficult to pull out exactly what he’s feeling. But…but Dean’s pretty used to that. He’d spent eleven years with the guy never knowing exactly how he felt. Not until…

Cas, almost like he can sense what Dean’s thinking about, sighs. 

“It’s not enough,” he says flatly, and Dean’s heart lurches. 

A million thoughts race through him, thoughts like, _I’m not enough_ and _I’ll make it a home for you this time_ and _I love you, I love you, I love you. Please, just give me some time to catch up_. 

But all that makes it to his lips is a stammered, stunned, “What?”

Cas nods towards him. 

“The blanket,” he says, frowning down at where Dean’s clutching the thin scrap of fabric for all it’s worth. “You’re still shivering.” 

Dean would deny it, if he were regaining motor-control at all. As it is, all he can do is shudder beside Cas, the warmth of his knee pressed to Dean’s the only warmth he’s known in what feels like eons. 

“Come here,” Cas says, opening his arms. 

Again, Dean’s mind does something of a record-scratch. 

And again, all he can manage is, “What?”

Cas huffs. 

“Your lips are blue, and humans aren’t meant to spend extended time in the Empty. I don’t need to be an angel anymore to know that your internal body temperature is well below normal, but since I happen to _not_ be an angel anymore, I now produce warmth. So.” Cas waves his arms. “Come here.” 

And really, what can Dean say to that? 

He shuffles closer to Cas. 

It’s awkward at first. Really, _really_ fucking awkward. Dean’s hunched over, and Cas’ arms are fiercely tight around him, but his own are just kind of mushed between their stomachs. Cas’ breath—faster than he’s used to, given that angels don’t technically have to breathe—is ghosting over the iced juncture of his neck, and Cas, though bloody, is the first thing he’s smelled that hasn’t been tar and mountain or bourbon-laced sadness in weeks, so, slowly, Dean relaxes, and his hunch becomes more of a slouch, until he’s basically kneeling in the floorboard with his face pressed into Cas’ chest. 

It’s still uncomfortable, though, and all he can think about is that he’s never had a problem sprawling out in this very backseat with someone before. He’d always just needed to get a little…

Closer. Cas tugs him closer, and with an ease that shouldn’t be possible, they shift and slot together. Dean unravels his arms from between them and winds them under Cas, weaves their legs, and sighs a breath of release. 

Settling against Cas, into Cas…it’s more peace than Dean Winchester ever dared to hope for. 

It’s still fucking cold, but Cas is warm, and Dean is warming, and he’s got his nose pressed right against the juncture of Cas’ shoulder and neck, and though he still smells faintly of the Empty and more strongly of the dried blood crusting his shirt, beneath it all, he smells like _Cas_ , somehow both cosmically ethereal and viscerally familiar. Comfortable. 

Cas tugs the blanket back up across Dean’s back, and when his hand lingers, falls into the valley between his shoulder blades and stills, Dean thinks about what exactly it means that he’s comfortable with Cas. 

It’s not just that he’s familiar. Dean…Dean doesn’t feel like he has to put on a show for Cas. He doesn’t have to be the caretaker Sam’s always needed, the soldier his father always wanted, the blunt little instrument, the bad guy, the ladies man, the pretty boy, the high school drop-out. Cas has seen him from every angle, and still, Dean gets to lie there, feeling the soft puffs of breath fall from between Cas’ lips, feel the slow unfurling of his muscles as warmth claims him again, feel the steadfast beat of Cas’ heart under his cheek. 

He just gets to lie there with his cold, runny nose pressed against the collar of Cas’ shirt and love, and be loved, and it’s more than he ever dared to hope for.

The thought chokes him up a little, enough that he’s just about to raise up and look at Cas and make sure he hasn’t dreamt all this up, when he notices the antsy, erratic rhythm Cas’ heart is taking under him. 

It takes Dean much, much longer than it should to realize why. 

He’d been laying there, loving Cas and loving the warmth rolling off him and loving the way his insides were slowly thawing out at having Cas living and breathing right under him, but he’d fumbled his plan. 

Forgotten a very critical part of said plan, in fact. 

He’d been laying there, thinking they were on the same page, but Dean had never actually managed to get the, _Of course, I love you!_ out from around his chattering teeth. 

Cas probably thought Dean was just jerking him around all over again, torturing him for the fun of it. 

Dean hates himself. And suddenly, his own heart stutters up-tempo, arms tightening around Cas just before he finally pushes himself up enough to gaze down at him. 

“Cas, I—” he starts, then freezes.

Cas has his eyes closed tightly, and his nostrils flared with every sharp intake of breath. 

Cas doesn’t say anything, doesn’t open his eyes, so Dean swallows down the twinge of fear and tries again. 

“Cas, you know, I—” 

This time, Cas cuts him off. 

“Don’t,” he whispers, but it’s sharp in the otherwise silence of the car. “Just…just don’t, alright? Please.” 

Cas’ eyes flutter open, and he looks so wrecked, so close to begging, that Dean’s heart shatters. 

Of course, he loves Cas. And of course, things are different now. Cas just lost everything he’s ever known, and for good this time. Eons of life, of magnificent, glistening life, wasted. On Dean. 

He hears his own voice in his ears, _Be human, Cas,_ and he flinches. 

He feels the hot rush of tears prickle along his lashes. 

He’d cost Cas everything, just by being selfish enough to love him, and now, things are different. He doesn’t want Dean anymore. 

It’s a possibility he hates himself for not preparing for. He’s just stunned and feeling everything crash against him in waves of self-hatred. 

“Cas, I’m so sorry,” Dean chokes. 

Cas screws his eyes closed again, and Dean watches, helpless, as a tear slides down Cas’ cheek and crashes into the upholstery. 

“Are you still cold?” Cas whispers after a moment, and Dean feels like he’s just had a bucket of ice scraped straight down the length of his spinal cord. But he knows that’s not what Cas means. He shakes his head. 

“I’m okay. Thanks.” 

Disentangling from Cas is the worst walk of shame Dean’s ever experienced. He feels the shame so, so deeply. 

Cas won’t meet his eyes once they’re separated. Just sits upright and glances out of the window. 

“Sun’s up,” he says, and Dean blinks. 

With his face tucked into the curve of Cas’ neck, he hadn’t noticed the sun creeping back into their world. 

“Shall we try the engine again?” Cas asks. 

He’s already moving for the door handle, so Dean doesn’t bother replying. Just slides out after him and takes his position behind the wheel. She guns to life on the first try, because why wouldn’t she? 

The drive back to the bunker is one of the longest of Dean’s life. They don’t talk about it. Don’t even come close, except the moment they cross the state line into Iowa, and Cas asks why he’d chosen Pontiac. 

Dean’s hands clench around the wheel. 

“I was in the area,” he lies and tries to shrug. 

Otherwise, they talk about safe things—what happened after Cas left, what happened to Chuck, if they’d heard from Jack, if they’d been hunting—or they don’t talk at all. 

Cas falls asleep somewhere in northern Nebraska, and Dean, despite having been wide awake—brief moments of cold-induced unconsciousness notwithstanding—for upwards of thirty-eight hours at this point, envies him the ease with which he drops off. He doesn’t think he could sleep if he tried. 

So, instead, he chugs an energy drink as he fills Baby’s tank and doesn’t look at the puffs of condensation Cas’ soft snores are leaving on the glass, doesn’t think about what that same breath had felt like ghosting across his skin. 

By the time they make port in Kansas, Dean feels like he’s about to crawl out of his skin. 

Cas sits up blearily as they park, then blinks at the bunker with about as much enthusiasm as he’s approached the rest of the humanness so far. Meaning, with nothing but a grim resignation and a tight clench of his jaw. Dean’s stomach rolls.

“You’re staying, right?” Dean asks. He really tries not to sound desperate. Really. He does. 

But judging by the way Cas turns his resigned look towards Dean, it doesn’t really work. He tries to remind himself that everything is different, and he’d known everything would _be_ different when he got Cas back. They were in _love_ , and now, things were too different, so it didn’t matter at all. 

“I’ve got nowhere else to go,” Cas says, raising a soft shoulder. 

That feeling in Dean crests and crashes, leaving him breathless. 

“Well, you were only gone a few weeks—” it _aches_ to say it so blithely, like Dean hadn’t been drinking himself into oblivion trying to come up with a way to get him back “—so your room’s just like you left it.” 

“Thank you,” Cas says quietly, dropping his eyes. 

“No problem,” Dean grunts. He doesn’t know why he’d added the qualifier that it had only been a few weeks. Dean knows that, if Cas ever dies for real, if he ever goes some place Dean can’t follow, his room will be untouched forever. 

Dean swallows this down and shoulders his way out of Baby. 

Sam is in a tizzy when he finally shoves open the front door, pacing in and out of sight at the foot of the war room. 

He freezes as soon as the door creaks open, then bursts into view with his arms outstretched. 

“What the hell, Dean?! You haven’t answered your phone for two fucking days! Where the hell were you?!” 

“Pontiac,” Dean answers brusquely, then steps aside so that Cas can join him on the landing. 

Sam’s anger fades immediately. 

“Cas,” he breathes. 

“Hi, Sam,” Cas answers, smiling a bit. 

Sam envelops him in a bone-crushing hug as soon as they hit the bottom of the stairs, and Dean’s just standing close enough to hear the air _whoosh_ out of Cas.

“Easy, killer, he’s human, now,” Dean grunts as he steps around the display. 

Sam drops Cas almost immediately and turns to Dean with big eyes.

“You actually did it,” he says, sounding just as awed as is deserved after the fucking two days Dean’s had. The fucking two _months_ he’s had. 

Dean shrugs, and Sam’s attention swivels back to Cas.

“God, I’m so glad you’re back. We were so worried about you,” he says. 

Dean doesn’t have the energy to point out that he obviously hadn’t been _that_ worried, if he was willing to let Cas rot in the Empty. 

Instead, he goes for the kitchen, for the booze. He knocks back two glasses in quick succession, suddenly regretting the tolerance he’s built up over the last unimaginable few weeks without Cas’ quiet grumble filling the bunker’s halls. 

After he’s downed those two, he abandons glasses altogether, and makes his way back through the happy little reunion towards his room.

“Gonna get some sleep,” he grunts towards them, then turns before either can acknowledge the whiskey hanging from his hand. 

He’s not quite fast enough to stop Sam from noticing though. 

“Hey, Dean,” he calls. 

Dean doesn’t stop, and after a frustrated grunt from Sam, it’s clear that he won’t be getting off without talking about this. Sam uses his stupidly long legs to trap Dean in the hallway just outside of his bedroom.

“You okay?” Sam asks, tilting those big eyes at him.

“Peachy,” Dean answers, working to plaster on a big fucking smile, happy-go-fucking-lucky. 

Sam’s gaze slides to the bottle. 

“It’s a celebratory bottle of whiskey,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know what you want from me, man.” 

“I just kinda thought,” Sam starts, hedging. 

Dean sighs. 

“You thought, what, Sam? That I was just gonna pull Cas out of the Empty, and it would be a fresh start for everyone, and we’d all just fuck off into our happily ever afters?” 

Dean tries to pretend the words don’t catch. Judging by the mournful eyes Sam gives him, it doesn’t work. 

“Yeah,” Sam murmurs.

Dean has to swallow twice before the knot in his throat unclenches enough to let him speak. 

“Then you’re an idiot,” Dean says. 

He wants it to come out sharp and spiteful, like the Dean who would rip up his anger to stab anyone who got too close. But Cas had been right. Everything he’s ever done, he’s done for love. He’s almost forgotten how to use that anger like a weapon. 

Sam gives him a sad turn of lips. 

“If you want to talk,” he starts, but Dean cuts him off. 

“Goodnight, Sammy,” he says, then turns towards his room. This time, Sam doesn’t stop him. 

Dean, believe it or not, usually does try to keep at least a slice of his liver untarnished for regeneration when he drinks. Usually.

Tonight is not one of those nights. Tonight, he sits up in bed with his headphones on, staring at the opposite wall, wondering if he’d ever stop being such a hazard to his own happiness. Even Cas, unshakeable, unbreakable Cas, he’s ruined. Forced him into a life he doesn’t want. Made him resent Dean. 

Tonight, he sits on his bed and listens to everything except Zepp, and drinks. By the time he’s finished the bottle, it doesn’t feel like touching a livewire every time he thinks about how badly he fucked up his only remaining shot at happiness, but he is still _thinking about it_ , so clearly, he needs another bottle. 

He stumbles out of bed and gropes his way down the poorly-lit hall, taking the turns on muscle memory with his eyes half-shut. He doesn’t even glance when he enters the kitchen, just heads straight for the liquor stash. He rummages around for a moment—he’s almost _certain_ that there had been at least one more bottle when he’d looked earlier—then damn near jumps out of his skin when there’s the skittering of glass across the tabletop behind him.

“Here,” Cas says, somehow both thunderously loud and achingly soft in the otherwise stillness of the kitchen. 

When Dean turns, he sees Cas’ hand retreating off the bottle of whiskey he’d been searing for and a mostly-empty tumbler sitting before him. 

Dean’s feeling pretty fuzzy around the edges right now, so he doesn’t immediately remember that he’d been drinking to stop thinking about Cas, and with that oversight in mind, it takes very little for Dean to plop down opposite Cas at the table and drag over another tumbler. 

“Figured you’d be in bed,” Dean says. He only slurs a little. 

Cas doesn’t look at him, just follows the pour of the whiskey as Dean makes himself a drink. 

“I probably should be. I just—” Cas trails off, sighs. 

“Rough night?” Dean says flatly, then pops out a dry smile that makes Cas huff a laugh. 

Dean, still not remembering that he’s hurt, counts it as a victory. Hell, even if he remembered that he was hurt, he’d still probably count making Cas laugh as a win. 

“Something like that,” Cas allows. He swallows back the rest of his whiskey, then grimaces. “I have no idea how you drink this. It is incredibly unpleasant.” 

“How many have you had?” 

“One.” 

“Yeah, the first one always burns. Pretty soon, they start going down like water.” 

“How many have you had?” Cas asks, looking up at him with those big, blue eyes, glassy in the yellow kitchen light. 

“One,” Dean echoes, then grins. “Bottle.” 

“Dean,” Cas admonishes, but the corner of his mouth ticks. 

“What?!” Dean groans. “I dunno if you noticed, but it was kind of a hard night for me, too.” 

And just like that, he remembers how much it hurts. How much he loves this man sitting before him, and how little it matters, now, at the end of things.

Cas’ mouth twitches down out of its little half-smile into a small quaver. 

They sit in stilted silence for a long moment, and Dean feels the alcohol rolling, rolling in him. He knocks back another just to keep the words from rising. 

They do anyway, long before Dean realizes that he’d said them. 

“I don’t think it’s really fair that you got to speak your truth, or whatever, but I don’t.” 

As soon as he says it, he feels his face burn, the alcohol warring with embarrassment to stake claim on the flush devouring him.

Cas’ eyes whip up to him. 

“What?” he asks, earnest, frozen still. 

Sober Dean would probably just grunt in reply. Sober Dean probably wouldn’t have opened his mouth to begin with. But, but _no_. Dean’s _right_. He might be drunk, but he’s _right_ , and it’s not fair that Cas gets to say he loves Dean just for the fucking euphoria of it or whatever, but Dean can’t say it back, not even once, no matter how many times he tries. And he’s tried. 

And more, he’s had to work damn hard for the balls to even _try_. It’s not fair. 

“You got to be all self-actualized by saying you love me, but every time I try to tell you how I feel, in Purgatory, back there in the car, you don’t want me to, and it’s not fair. Why do you do that?” 

Cas gapes at him, and it makes the fuzzy edges of his drunkenness quaver. It takes a long moment to realize that it’s not actually the world quavering but his vision. 

He’s not drunk enough to not feel anything, so instead, he’s feeling everything, a whole hell of a lot of everything, and it’s crashing around inside of him, chewing him up and out, and all he wants is to tell Cas he loves him. He doesn’t even need Cas to say it back. 

“I—” Dean starts again, then gets tangled up in the words. “I know what you meant now. When you said it wasn’t in the having, but just in being. You don’t have to love me anymore. I…I know I fucked things up. I dragged you down, made you human, just like me, and I know that isn’t what you want. So, you don’t have to love me, but just, please, let me say it. Please.” 

Dean’s voice gives out on the last word, and he’s staring at Cas, fucking _shining_ at Cas, he knows it. But he needs this. It’s thrashing around inside of him, viscous and drowning, and he doesn’t know what to _do_ with it all, if not give it to Cas. 

Cas has tears in his eyes, too, and the sight makes Dean’s stomach crash through the floor. He looks devastated, like Dean’s love would crush him, and it might, fuck, it might, but Dean deserves to speak his piece, to find peace. 

So, he opens his mouth. 

“I love you, Cas.” His voice breaks again on Cas’ name, and suddenly, the whole speech from his botched plan is crashing out onto the table between them, pin-balling around between when he can’t meet Cas’ eyes anymore and when he forces himself to do it anyway because Cas deserves that. “Of _course_ , I love you, you idiot. I’ve loved you for years. I’m not good with words or, or with gestures or, fuck, even with _love,_ really. I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve never thought I deserved it, and when you told me you loved me, man, that fucking gutted me. The idea that something, some _one_ as completely unfathomable and incredible and _beautiful_ as you could love _me?_ I don’t understand it, Cas. I’ll never understand it, and it makes more sense for you to hate me, but I—I don’t want you to hate me.” 

Dean chokes again. He’s staring at Cas, terrified. 

Of all the words he wrenched out of himself, _that_ is what makes him feel the most cut open and raw. Even flaying out his love for Cas doesn’t compare, because even when he hasn’t said it, he’s _shown_ his love for Cas, in every messy, fucked-up way he knew how.

But he’s never admitted that he didn’t want to be hated, rarely acted to contradict that. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Cas,” Dean forces out around the knot in his throat. “I just keep making it hard and pushing you away and fucking things up, and I know that, I _know that_ , and sometimes, I think maybe it’s on purpose ’cause if you hated me, then it wouldn’t be so fucking scary, but _I don’t want you to hate me, Cas._ ” 

Dean finally manages to lift his eyes up to Cas’, desperate and manic and shuddering around his tears. Cas holds his gaze, tears sliding down his cheeks as well. He’s got his hands clenched tight on the tabletop. 

“It’s okay if you’re mad at me,” Dean whispers before Cas can get a word in. “I fucked up again. I love you, and it’s all different now, too late now. It took me too long to say it, and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve to, to _die_ thinking you were unloved. And now you’re human, and I just fucking ripped that choice from you, too, and I know you’re sad, and you probably resent me, and that’s okay. But I don’t want you to hate me, Cas. Please. Please, don’t hate me.” 

Dean holds his eyes for as long as he possibly can, and when he has to close them, wrench them tight against the idea that he got Cas back just to lose him in the worst possible way, Cas is suddenly at his side, lifting a hand and swiping through the tears under Dean’s eye, so impossibly tender, so entirely undeserved that it makes him cry harder.

The world has a knack for making Dean hard. Cas makes him weak. Makes him feel. Makes him want so, so much to fall into him and just sob, expunge himself of the wracking emotions inside of him, but he can’t. He can’t. He doesn’t deserve that. 

“Dean,” Cas murmurs. The hands that had been clearing his tears tug gently at his face, and as much as Dean wants to hide, wants to cower in his vulnerability, it only takes a few more gentle swipes of Cas’ thumbs to bring his face up. Cas’ eyes are red and shining, and he sucks in a breath, like he’s about to speak. 

Instead, he leans in and kisses Dean soft, so, so soft. 

It rips a noise like a wounded animal from Dean, and it hurts so fucking sweetly. His hand comes up to clutch the back of Cas’ coat, and his only thought is, _please, please, please, please_. 

When Cas’ breath skids over his lips as they separate, Dean has to keep his eyes clenched shut. He’s never needed someone like this. 

“Dean,” Cas says gently and scrubs across his face again. Dean refuses to open his eyes. And then, “Dean, please, look at me.” 

So. He does. 

Cas’ lips turn up a bit, but he still looks like Dean hollowed him out with his words. He realizes quite suddenly that it was a selfish thing, Cas’ confession all those weeks ago. Dean’s glad that Cas finally decided to take what Dean had been too afraid to offer, and he’s glad that Cas was able to find some peace through it. But Dean’s never been very good at being selfish. Seeing how Cas looks just as gutted as Dean had been that night, Dean almost wishes he’d never opened his mouth. 

He deserves to find peace, too, but he doesn’t know if peace is possible with Cas looking at him like that. 

But then, Cas’ face changes. It would be damn near imperceptible to someone who hadn’t made a life-study out of Cas’ microexpressions, but Dean _had_ , and all at once, he’s seeing warmth and fondness and exasperation and _love_ , so exactly the same as the way Cas has always looked at him that he doesn’t know how he’d missed it before. 

“Dean,” Cas starts slowly. Swipes his thumb along the soft skin under Dean’s eye. “I will never not love you.” 

Dean’s brain goes to static. His fist clenches at Cas’ back, the trench coat straining under his fingers. 

“But—” 

Cas shakes his head.

“I will _never_ not love you.” He says it gently and without exception. His eyes do not waver from Dean’s.

“But you’re human now,” Dean murmurs, like it’s reason enough to not love Dean anymore. It is, really. 

Cas just shakes his head again and shifts one hands so that it comes to wrap around the nape of Dean’s neck, the other still cupping his cheek. He drags Dean in until their foreheads are pressed together.

“I am,” Cas agrees. “But I chose that. I understood the cost of coming home to you.”

Dean feels the lump in his throat swell again. 

“That’s so much to give up, Cas,” he chokes. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Cas says, smiling a bit. “I spent many years as an angel, made many memories I’ll always cherish, many that I’ll always regret. But you, you have never been a regret, Dean Winchester. You will never be. Yes, you are fallible and imperfect and a veritable disaster, pain in my ass most of the time, and I love you. So much. So much that I don’t know how to exist without loving you. I have chosen you a million times and will do so a million more, and doing so will never be a burden.” 

Suddenly, there’s a fresh round of stinging behind his eyes, and Dean just can’t get his head around the magnitude of Cas’ love right now. 

He tries to understand something smaller instead, tries to save digesting the cosmic scope of Cas’ love for another time when he isn’t drunk and pried out raw and overwhelmed by the closeness of Cas. 

“But in the car…?” Dean trails off, the world swinging around him from the alcohol and from the dried tears and, frankly, from how close Cas’ lips remain to his. He never wants to be further from them than this. 

There’s a small, nasty part of his brain telling him to stop being such a needy bitch, both physically and emotionally. 

The part of him that can _feel_ the patience, the love rolling off Cas tells the nasty part to shut the fuck up. He’s never once let himself be loved soft, and if Cas is offering, he’s goddamn accepting it. 

Cas lets a small sigh into the air between them. His fingers tighten in the short hairs at the base of Dean’s neck. 

“In the car, I thought you were going to let me down easy. I didn’t think I could take that right then…” Cas says. “And in Purgatory, well, I guess I just never imagined that _this_ was what you were trying to say.” 

He dips forward, catches Dean’s lips gently. 

“I’m fallible, too, Dean,” Cas whispers when they separate. “I’m going to make mistakes, and I’m going to hurt you without meaning to, and I’m going to be afraid, and I’m telling you this now so you know what to expect for the foreseeable future, if that’s what you want. Because I will never hate you. I will never not want you. I will never not love you.” 

Dean’s sure his breath smells like whiskey. He kisses Cas anyway, presses into his mouth until he sighs his lips open, and when their tongues meet, it’s all he can do to keep his every thought from scattering in the wind. He pulls away with a gasp, an ache in his chest from so long breathing in the cold and from going so long without this love he’s craved all his life. 

“I’m gonna have a monster hangover tomorrow, and I’m gonna be a little bitch about it,” Dean tells him, and Cas smiles a dopey little smile that sends Dean’s heart hammering. “I’m gonna sing really bad, really loud on every car ride.” Cas nods, tugs a bit on Dean’s hair, makes him swallow the sudden flood of saliva in his mouth. “I’m gonna buy you a cowboy hat, a nice one. I’m gonna make you wear it at super inappropriate times, and you’re gonna pretend to be annoyed, and I’m gonna pretend I’m not thrilled that you’re humoring me at all.” Cas gives him a grin, a big one this time, gummy and brilliant, and Dean _has_ to kiss him again. “I’ll probably never feel like I deserve your love, but I’m gonna try, Cas. I really will.” 

Cas kisses him softer, sweeter. 

“I’ll keep insisting until you believe it,” he murmurs against Dean’s mouth. 

“May be a long time,” Dean murmurs back. 

“I don’t mind.” 

It’s so sincere that it stings a bit, and Dean knows he doesn’t mind. Cas isn’t greedy with his love, with his reassurances. Dean just has to get used to asking for them, accepting them. 

“I’m gonna forget your birthday.” 

Cas barks a laugh, loud and open-mouthed, and Dean loves him. He may be sloppy drunk and sentimental, but he fucking loves Cas. Loves him so much it kills him. 

“Well, the Gregorian calendar doesn’t exactly account for ancient beings, so I guess I’ll forgive that one,” Cas tells him, still grinning at him, still holding his face, still holding him together. 

Dean breathes out a slow breath and tries to get used to the feeling of someone else holding him together. 

“So,” Dean says on the back of that slow, unfurling breath. “You wanna try this? With me?” 

Cas’ smile softens. 

“Of course, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone, and especially Mere, I hope you enjoyed this, I love you, you rock<3


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